Napoleon: A Biography

get into any head except that of a ge nius. Accident, hazard, chance, call it
what you may, a mystery to ordinary minds, becomes a reality to superior
men.'
Napoleon was also a prince among deceivers, who placed fundamental
reliance on his network of spies, agents and informers. It was a central
part of his methods that when he made contact with the enemy, he would
immediately seek to mislead their spies as to his real numbers, adding a
division here, a brigade there at the very last moment and using a thick
cavalry screen to hide the concentration of inf antry. His highly fluid
corps system gave him flexibility in drawing up his battle lines, which was
always designed to bamboozle the enemy. He liked to deploy along very
wide fronts, sometimes more than one hundred kilometres, so that his
opponents could never know exactly where he was going to mass for the
vital blow. In order to cover all of his presumed options, the opposing
general was likely to disperse his forces, with fatal results. The front
tended to narrow as his prey was spotted but, to prevent anticipation,
Napoleon would often narrow the front and then widen it again to keep
the enemy guessing. A favourite ploy was to station his forces two days'
march away from the enemy on, say, a Sunday, leaving the enemy to
conclude that battle would be joined on a Tuesday; the French army
would then stage a night march and catch their opponents unawares on
Monday.
But if things went wrong, Napoleon was usually equal to the occasion
as he was a superb improviser. One of his maxims was that you should
always be able to answer the question: if the enemy appears unexpectedly
on my right or on my left, what should I do? Naturally, improvisation
was made easier by the previous mathematical calculation of all chances,
no matter how far-fetched. It was, for example, essential for a commander
always to have at his di sposal at any given moment both an infantry and a
cavalry arm; and the worst perils could be anticipated by never having
more than one line of operations and never linking columns in sight of or
close to the enemy. 'No detachment should be made on the eve of the day
of attack, because the state of affairs may alter during the night, either by
means of the enemy's movements in retreat, or the arrival of great
reinforcements, which may place him in a situation to assume an
offensive attitude, and to turn the premature dispositions you have made
to your own destruction.'
Napoleon additionally possessed an almost preternatural eye for
ground and battlefield terrain, including a minute awareness of the
strengths and weaknesses of every possible vantage point. From looking
at a relief map he could visualize all the details of a potential battlefield